With momentum slowly building for a high-speed rail system across California, elected officials and business leaders from around the world will gather this week in Los Angeles for a major rail conference.

The U.S. High Speed Rail Association Conference on Thursday and Friday will offer a closer look at the plans and proposed routes for what could become the largest public works project in California history.

The conference in Universal City will also give leaders a chance to explore the long-

term impacts, including the potential seizing of residential and business property to make room for tracks linking Los Angeles, Palmdale and Anaheim.

“We’re really the only industrialized nation left that is just now getting around to building high-speed rail,” said association President/CEO Andy Kunz. “This is one of the best forms of transportation ever invented. It has enormous capacity to move large numbers of people quickly and easily without delays.”

Under one proposal, the Palmdale-to-Los Angeles route would follow State Route-58/

Soledad Canyon from Palmdale to Sylmar and then along the Metrolink railroad line to Los Angeles’s Union Station.

“This portion is still being evaluated, but there are definitely right-of-way impacts in building dedicated tracks in that corridor that would result in impacts on commercial, industrial and residential buildings,” said Alex Clifford, executive officer for high-

speed rail at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Some critics see high-speed rail as an expensive waste of money at a time when government funds are drying up amid big budget deficits and a weak economy.

“It’s really just an extravagance that very few people are likely to use,” said Kris Vosburgh, executive director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

“We are hearing extravagant promises, but this is just going to run us deeper into debt. We are a state with the lowest bond rating in the nation, have the third-highest unemployment rate and this is an extravagance we can’t afford.”

Although high-speed rail in the United States has been beset by false starts and slow progress for three decades, some experts say the tide is turning.

President Barack Obama recently announced that California will receive $2.3 billion in stimulus funds to help build an 800-mile-long, high-speed rail line linking Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles and San Diego.

In November 2008, California voters approved Proposition 1A, a $9.95 billion bond measure to build the exclusive rail lines that would zip people throughout the state on sleek, electric trains traveling up to 220 mph.

Last month, the state’s high-speed rail authority named Roelof van Ark, a senior executive with more than 30 years of experience as an engineer and manager for some of the world’s leading transportation companies, as its new CEO at a salary of $375,000.

If the plan receives the necessary approvals, construction on the first phase – from Anaheim to the Bay Area – is scheduled to begin in 2012 with the Anaheim to Los Angeles leg.

“We’re in a very early phase and still conducting environmental reviews of the whole system, but there is a tremendous amount of momentum to it,” said Jeff Barker, deputy director of the California High-Speed Rail Authority. “The state has agreed to put $9.95 billion into this and we’ll leverage that money to bring an additional $34 billion to the state.”

High-speed rail proponents say the system will help relieve pressure on the state’s highway system and airports, while reducing the state’s oil consumption.

By 2030, the state’s population is expected to grow to

50 million people, which will nearly double interregional travel to 1 billion trips per year. They say a high-speed rail system will alleviate the need to build thousands of additional miles of new freeways and dozens of new airport departure gates and runways. The system is being designed to accommodate up to 100 million riders per year.

Proponents also say the project will create 600,000 construction jobs, including 125,000 to build the Palmdale-

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